


I Thought You'd Never Call

by Lily_Padd_23



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Declarations Of Love, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 23:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18375932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Padd_23/pseuds/Lily_Padd_23
Summary: What happens a few weeks into the Santos administration....





	I Thought You'd Never Call

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is a response to the last episode of the canonical series. It is set apart from my other stuff in that I tend to write under a head-canon timeline that they are a couple all along and tend to just ignore their onscreen romances. However, I recently went back and watched some of the non-Sorkin episodes (which I rarely do), and I challenged myself to write what happens next for Sam and Josh if everything else in the show happened as it did. So don’t read this as connected to any of my other pieces, but as directly following the actual canon… with the general agreement that Josh and Sam probably did it a few times off camera and didn’t tell us about it...

I Thought You’d Never Call  
By Lily Padd

 

He figured it would happen eventually. He didn’t figure it would take less than a month after the Inauguration.

Yet, on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, he found himself on his back, a crisp white sheet pulled up to his chest, staring at an all too familiar ceiling, flushed and breathless.

It wasn’t the first time. The first time in years, though. The first time since he promised himself it would be the last time.

He felt Josh’s fingers wrap around his own on top of the bed sheets, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath before turning his head. There beside him, on his back, Josh was looking over at him, chocolate brown eyes exhausted and sad. Sadder than he had seen them in a long time.

        “Josh…” Sam whispered when he caught his breath, shifting his hand to hold Josh’s fully. “Josh, what’s wrong?”

        “What’s her name?” Josh said, his voice a cocktail of resignation, bitterness, and that sadness behind his eyes.

        “Who?” Sam asked, even though he knew.

        “You said you’re getting married,” Josh answered, “So what’s her name?”

Sam felt himself swallow hard, “Doesn’t matter.”

        “Well, am I ever gonna meet her?” Josh asked, his eyes scanning back and forth between Sam and the ceiling.

        “Maybe,” Sam sighed, “Might not come.”

His fiancé was supposed to fly into D.C. next month after getting things in order. But the phone calls were already becoming stilted. It was an alarming case of déjà vu. Only this time…

        “What’s her name?” Josh asked again.

        “Jeff,” Sam responded matter-of-factly.

        “That’s a funny name for a…”

        “Man?” Sam inserted, “Not really.”

Only this time, he knew about Josh. Only this time, the protestation wasn’t “You’re up and leaving to chase some candidate you’ve never even heard of? Are you _crazy?”_ This time the argument was, “You’re up and leaving to chase Josh Lyman? Are you _still in love with him?”_ And Sam had paused far too long before saying, “No. No _of course_ not.”

But it had always been Josh. Even before Sam knew it had always been Josh, it had always been Josh.

        “Ah-kay.” Josh gave a halting, perplexed nod.

Letting go of Josh’s hand and propping himself up onto his elbow, Sam began, “Hey, you’re the one who started in with saying ‘she,’ and it’s just easier sometimes…”

        “You didn’t think…” Josh cut in.

Sam pushed on “…not to focus too much on negligible details.”

        “You didn’t think…” Josh adjusted himself to mirror Sam’s posture and raised an emphatic eyebrow, “You didn’t think that’s more consequential than a negligible detail? We aren’t talking about somebody’s shoe size, here.”

        “It’s just pronouns, really,” Sam said, “Why get bogged down with semantics?”

Josh couldn’t help but laugh at that, and that made Sam laugh, too, a fleeting warm nostalgia covering them.

The sex hadn’t been warm. It had been rough, desperate, and fast, cursing through gritted teeth drowned out by the rumbling of distant thunder.

Now, they looked lovingly at each other until Josh’s face fell back to that resigned look.

        “How does this work, then,” Josh asked, “You marrying a man?”

        “It’s probably not going to work now,” Sam admitted, firmly holding a deep gaze at Josh.

        “I’m going to breeze right past that for a sec,” Josh broke the stare, turning his eyes back up at the ceiling, “What was the plan here, Sam?”

        “We were gonna go to Massachusetts for the ceremony and everything,” Sam exhaled, falling dramatically backwards on the pillow, “But now, the whole endeavor seems futile.”

        “Why?” Josh asked tilting his eyes down at Sam. Sam just turned, giving him that look he had when Josh said something oblivious. “Because of _me?”_ Josh’s eyes and brow crinkled. Sam nodded, and Josh went on, “I’ve been seeing Donna.”

Nodding again, sweetly, Sam said, “I know.”

        “Yeah,” Josh said. A long silence stirred, and he added, a bit deflated, “It’s getting pretty serious.”

Sam snorted, “You don’t sound particularly happy about that.”

        “No, I am, I— am,” Josh cast his gaze away and onto anything and everything but Sam, “I am. She’s, she’s wonderful. She’s my friend. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, and funny, and she makes me feel… grounded when everything else makes me feel insane.”

        “Do you love her?” it was the question Sam hadn’t been allowing into his brain.

        “Yes?” Josh offered, “I mean, I certainly have love in my heart for her.”

        “So what’s the problem?” Sam asked it in an almost lawyerly voice, readjusting again to be back at eyelevel with Josh.

        “She’s not you,” Josh said earnestly. Sam reached out a hand to Josh’s face, stroked his thumb across his lip, his jaw line, his chin, and then leaned across to kiss him. After they broke apart just a little bit, Josh asked into Sam’s mouth, “Do you love him?”

        “I certainly have love in my heart for him,” Sam echoed Josh with a smirk, “But he’s not you.”

Josh went back in for another kiss and then pulled away an infinitesimal amount before saying directly onto Sam’s lips, “So Jeff, that’s not like, a frat boy name?”

Sam cracked up, kissing Josh again through laughter, and Josh kept going, “Does he wear cargo shorts on the weekends? Or those ones with the little lobsters?”

        “Josh, stop it,” Sam laughed, throwing his head back.

        “Don’t tell me,” Josh continued, “He golfs.”

A chortle came from the back of Sam’s throat as he said, “I don’t think one golfs; I think one _plays_ golf.”

        “Which Jeff does,” Josh went on, “With his fraternity brothers… Brad and Chad and Chip.”

        “Brad, Chad, and Chip?” Sam let and idle hand fall on to Josh’s.

        “They’re stock brokers,” Josh turned his hand over to let Sam trace his lifelines and the shadow of his scars, “And tax lawyers. And when Jeff’s not on the range, he ties a salmon-colored sweater around his shoulders and goes off on his boat that has some lawyer pun name. Does he grill? I think he likes to grill.” Sam just kept laughing, running his fingertips over Josh’s hand, “Tell me I’m wrong.” Sam didn’t meet his eyes, but tilted his head like a shrug, and Josh goaded him on, “Have I painted a pretty accurate picture?”

        “I don’t want to talk about him here,” Sam said a little bashfully, the corners of his mouth still turned up, but the smile in his eyes dwindling.

        “Just tell me this,” Josh dipped his head to meet Sam’s downcast gaze, “Is he better lookin’ than me?”

        “Well…” Sam stated, “That’s subjective.”

        “Whoa!” Josh sat up all the way, _“That_ much better looking, huh?”

        “No, Josh!” Sam sat up too, grabbing Josh’s arm, “No! You know I… there’s nobody who does it for me like you do.”

        “What, are we in the talking-over-a-saxophone section of an 80s slow jam now?” Josh teased. Sam broke into another fit of laughter. He kissed Josh’s forehead and then stood up, crossing to the chest of drawers where he’d left his blackberry. As Sam scrolled through the e-mails, Josh asked, “So what’s next?”

        “Well, I gotta reply to this message from O’Connell about the Ways and Means meeting on the…”

        “No, I meant, what’s next for us, Sam,” Josh clarified.

Sam turned around, and saw Josh sitting up, leaning back on his hands and looking at Sam with an unassuming but hopeful expression. Sam sighed, tossed his blackberry back down, and fumbled for his boxers, “I don’t know, Josh, why is this particular time different than any of the others we’ve had together in the past twenty years?”

        “Because it is!” Josh asserted, starting to stand up, pausing and interjecting, “Sam, baby, could get me something to, uh…” Sam strode to the bathroom as Josh continued, “It’s different because you came back.”

        “Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t come back for you, Josh,” Sam called from the bathroom.

        “But you _did_ come back, and we still got it!” Josh cried, a dimple sparking onto his cheek, “Besides, for whom else do you come so quickly?” Sam was back in the bedroom, and gave Josh a dirty look for his dirty joke, throwing the towel forcefully so it hit Josh’s face. As Josh mopped up Sam’s spill from his stomach and thighs, he went on, “Anyway, it was hard enough not sleeping with you when you were a continent away, it’ll be impossible not to sleep with you when you’re just down the hall.”

        “Well then, I _really_ need to resign,” Sam said, returning to the work of dressing himself.

Josh floundered, “What, no? Why? That’s the opposite of my point.”

Sam sighed lowly, zipping up his pants, “Josh, for the first time in your life you are getting to do the job you were born to do,” Sam hooked his belt and then put his hands on his hips, looking over at where Josh sat, “You were put on this planet to be COS, and I would never, ever forgive myself if I did anything to prevent you from doing what you have waited your whole life for.”

His face completely stricken with sincerity, Josh said quietly, “But what if I was put on this planet to be with you?”

Sam felt his heart pang and a soft smile cross his lips, _“Josh…”_ he whispered, temporarily lost in the moment. An unexpected, muffled thunderclap from outside pulled their focus away. They both glanced in the direction of Josh’s window as the sound of rain began to scatter on the glass. When they met each other’s eyes again, Sam sighed and said, “That isn’t how this ends.”

        “So how does this end?” Josh asked, throwing the towel to the floor and scrounging around unsuccessfully for his own boxers.

        “Like this!” Sam sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his white Henley as the sound of the rain got louder, “It ends like this every time. It feels good right now because we are here, but when we walk out of here, we’re… We’re too much for each other, Josh. What we would have to navigate to be anymore than _this_ to each other… that would be too much. And that’s okay, but Josh…” he let out a long exhale and shifted on the bed to face Josh. He placed a firm hand on Josh’s hand, and looking straight in his eyes said, “We can’t keep doing this to each other. It’s too hard.” Josh mouthed Sam’s name, but Sam kept going, “Look, I don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to be happy with anybody else, and maybe, we’re the only people we’re ever gonna love like this, but I can’t be why this gig doesn’t live up to what you’ve dreamed. You _know_ that whatever we would have to do to make things work between us is mutually exclusive with being the Chief of Staff you have been working to be: a Chief of Staff who can concentrate on running the country without some scandal dragging him down and keeping him from being effective and focused on what matters. Being with me would destroy that. And that would destroy you, which would subsequently destroy me.”

At that exact moment, Josh’s pager went off somewhere in the pile of sheets and comforters. Sam fished it out, held it up, and said sympathetically, _“This_ is who you are, and I could never jeopardize that.”

He tossed the pager to Josh, who took it and chucked it back down defiantly. Josh then moved his other hand to cover Sam’s and said in a faltering breath, “I can’t do this without you, Sam.” He couldn’t pull his eyes away from where their hands clasped as he muttered on, “I can’t, _I can’t,_ I can’t.”

        “Josh, _Josh…”_ Sam took Josh’s cheek in his palm, “Yes, you can.”

        “I can’t!” Josh repeated, his voice cracking, “I can’t.”

        “You can!” Sam insisted softly, finally drawing Josh’s face up to meet his eyes. “You will!”

Josh slumped, trembling slightly, against Sam’s shoulder. They held each other for a few minutes silently, breathing, listening to the drum of rain outside, and inhaling the way they smelled.

        “Okay,” Sam finally whispered, letting Josh up. Sam blinked back tears as he took Josh in and forced a smile before standing up and putting on his sweater. Josh sat on the bed looking a little stunned, still naked, still breathless, his mouth still dropped open. Sam reached for his hand, pulled it to his lips and kissed it and told him, “I’m going to go. I’ll stay until you can find another Deputy, but then I think I should probably go back to California.”

Not letting go of Sam’s hand, Josh raised an eyebrow and joked flatly, his voice hoarse, “Back to your golf-playing grill master?”

Sam laughed lightly and said, “Actually, he bakes.”

        “He _bakes?”_ Josh snickered, “Like cakes?”

        “Yes, like cakes,” Sam chuckled, turning away, “But no, I don’t think I’m going back to him.”

        “Then why go?” Josh pleaded, lifting up and tucking his knees under himself in order to keep holding Sam’s hand.

        “Because you have a really important job to do,” Sam said, “And, like I said, I’m not going to be the reason that you aren’t able to give that job everything you have.”

        “Don’t you think you’re giving yourself a little too much credit?” Josh said caustically, falling back onto his feet behind him.

        “Josh…” Sam whispered, “Get dressed.” He moved towards the door, their fingers lingering together until the last possible millisecond, “Go surprise Donna. Take her out to dinner. She’d like that.”

Willing himself not to look back over his shoulder, Sam headed through Josh’s living room to the door. He heard Josh call after him, “Sounds like it’s getting pretty bad out there if you want to borrow my rain coat, it’s hangin’ on the back of the door.”

        “I’ll be fine,” Sam said, knowing full well that, in a future moment of weakness, he would probably end up using returning it as an excuse to show back up at Josh’s place. “You’ll have my letter on your desk Monday morning.”

As Josh’s apartment door closed behind him, he took a second to steady himself against it, pulling his thick grey cardigan close around him. He took a few deep breaths and then made his way to the elevator. As it beeped down to the lobby, he pressed his thumb and his forefinger against his tear ducts, squeezing his eyes closed as tight as possible until he saw pink and yellow speckles. He wasn’t going to let himself cry.

This was the deal he had struck with himself when he accepted the job; he made himself promise in his head that he would buy a one-way ticket back to San Francisco the minute there was even the _suggestion_ of something happening between him and Josh. He’d repeated it under his breath, like a calming mantra, as he boarded the plane to Ronald Reagan. He found himself scribbling on his napkins as he ate his peanuts, “even the suggestion, even the suggestion,” and he starting training himself to have a Pavlovian response so that every time his heart skipped a beat when Josh walked in the room, the first thought that came into his head was, “one-way ticket back.”

It hadn’t worked very well, seeing as he’d ended up in Josh’s bed. But as the elevator slowed, he repeated his mantra internally with new resolve, as committed to not being committed to Josh as he had once been _to_ Josh.

It made more sense in his head.

Yet, even as the elevator doors opened, he felt himself hesitate when he realized his train of thought had switched from diligently repeating “even the suggestion means a one-way ticket back” to “what if I was put on this planet to be with you?” For a fraction of time that could have been a second or a minute, he debated slamming his finger into the button for Josh’s floor, running back in and saying, “I _was_ put on this planet to be with you.” But then, as his heart fluttered at the notion, his automatic, “one-way ticket back” slipped out of his lips. So he walked out of the elevator, through the lobby and out the door onto the rainy sidewalk.

And that was that.

Sam felt himself whispering it against the beat of raindrops, “That’s that.” Shaking off the memory of how Josh’s face had looked, he tried instead to think about the checklist of items he had to do in order to leave. He had to figure out a way to get out of the lease for the penthouse apartment in Alexandria. And that’s that. He had to call his old boss and see if he still had his job. He had to have a difficult conversation with Jeff— one that would no doubt start with Jeff saying, “You slept with him, didn’t you?” when Sam would be unable to disguise his guilt. He had to collect up the few things he’d set up in the office. And that’s that. That’s how it ended. He had to put his stuff back in the cardboard boxes out of which he’d just begun to organize them. That’s how it ended, and it hurt every bit as bad as he thought it would. He had to change into some dry clothes because this sweater was just not doing the trick to keep out the February rain. He had to buy a plane ticket. And that was that.

That’s how it ended.

That was that.

        “Seaborn!”

He was already half way down Josh’s street when he spun around to the sound of his name. There was Josh, in a haphazardly donned blue sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, his left shoe from a different set than his right one. Sam froze and Josh broke into a sprint, stopping several yards in front of him and saying, “I don’t accept your resignation.”

        “What?!” Sam cried over the rain.

        “I’m your boss, Sam, and I don’t accept your resignation,” Josh repeated louder, tossing his hands in the air by his sides, already completely soaked through to the bone, “And frankly, I don’t accept your logic, either!”

Sam just looked at him, blinking away raindrops. Josh’s hair gelled to his face in the rainwater, his mismatched shoes filling with water, and the tag of his sweatshirt sticking out at his neck. Sam opened his mouth and all that came out was, “Your shirt is on backwards.”

        “It is a _modal fallacy_ to suggest that we could never… I mean, just because something is true now, doesn’t mean that it _has_ to be true.” Josh ignored him, shouting his soliloquy over the rain, somehow occupying the juxtaposition of utter hopelessness and sheer joy, “I am miserable right now. Have been since you left. For a lot of reasons. You’re not the only reason, but you’re up there on the list. So, I really don’t accept your logic that who I need to be to be with you and who I need to be to be COS cancel each other out because, Sam, I am _never_ happier than I am when I’m with you. I don’t need you to survive, and you don’t complete me, and you’re not my other half, but _God,_ being with you sure beats not being with you. I know I _can_ do this without you, Sam, but I can’t do this _well_ without you. And I sure as shit don’t _want_ to do it without you. You keep saying that you’ll be too much, that it’ll be too much, that I won’t be able to handle it and all the consequences that come with it, but that seems like a really crappy self-fulfilling prophecy when we haven’t even given ourselves a chance! For twenty years, we’ve just decided that this is all we’ll ever get when we’ve never given ourselves a _chance_ to prove that theory wrong. Why is that, Sam? Why is that? Why _is_ that when… when everybody else I’ve ever been with just feels like a placeholder for you.”

Sam started to answer, but found that he was dumbstruck. He stood there with his mouth open as rain poured in, the wind pulling the rain towards him at an angle. The rain was getting harder and harder, and Sam couldn’t feel his toes anymore. In fact, he could barely draw in breath anymore.

        “You’re always there, Sam,” Josh’s voice was growing strained from yelling over the storm, but he kept going, “You say that this is the life that I have been working for, that this is the life I have been dreaming about as long as I can remember. But you’re always there. This is the biggest thing I’m gonna do, but you’re just getting started. And I want to be there for all of that. Just like you’re always there for this. Every single time I thought about this life, this job, this… you’re always there, Sam. And my dream is not my dream without you there. Being with you will make it harder, but it’ll make it better. It’ll make _me_ better. Not that that’s… not that that’s you’re responsibility, but you make me better because I— yeah, I love you. That’s it. I do. And I think I make you better, too. I don’t know how you want to play this, but I’m not losing you again.”

Sam stood staring at him for a long time before he could say anything. Then Josh widened his eyes even more and made a prompting gesture as if to tell Sam to say something, to throw him a rope. So Sam asked, “What is it with you and the rain?”

        “Sam?!” Josh shot back.

        “No, seriously, I love you, too, Josh, but can we talk about this inside?” Sam said, starting to bounce up and down, his hands tugging at his soaking sleeves, “I don’t think we want to add pneumonia to our expanding list of major life complications today.”

        “’Kay!” Josh answered, “So come back inside.”

        “Okay.” Sam said.

        “Okay.”

Blinking, Josh turned back towards his apartment, holding up his shoulders against the wind and speeding up his pace. With a surge of that same something that had sent him running out of that conference room nearly a decade ago, Sam dashed to catch up to him, slipping his hand into Josh’s.

He wouldn’t let go this time.

Neither of them would.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, these two don’t belong to me. 
> 
> I wanted to play with some of that energy from that scene in Transition (Season 7 Episode 19) where Josh is going out on a limb for Sam, and is confused when he’s met with Sam’s left-brain logistical side rather than his optimism. So I tried to take that and run with it… in circles maybe. Let me know what you think!


End file.
